1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a portable device for continuously collecting information in time sequence about the living body of a wearer of the device in his or her daily life.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is widely known that living physiological information monitoring device for monitoring the status of living bodies have been used to continuously measure living body information for the purpose of assistance in health care, diagnosis and treatment. For example, step counters capable of counting the number of steps made by a wearer while walking to determine the amount of exercise done by the wearer are in widespread use. In use of such step counters, measurement is continuously performed and measurement data is handled by being totaled; that is, the total number of walking steps in one day is used as an index of health care.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,197,489 discloses an attempt to detect fine bodily movements of a wearer and to use data on detected bodily movements in treatments, etc. According to the specification of this patent, each kind of movement has a particular frequency characteristic. For example, the specific frequency of breathing ranges from 0.2 to 1 Hz; that of heartbeat, from 2 to 3 Hz; that of activities during the night, from 0.2 to 3 Hz; and that of tremors, from 2 to 9 Hz. A frequency signal corresponding to each of these particular movements is extracted by changing a filter constant, quantified and recorded in time sequence.
Conventional living body information monitoring devices enable objective measurements of information on a daily or weekly basis about a living body, e.g., measurements of changes of bodily movements, changes in the amount of activity, heartbeat, body temperature, etc. However, they are incapable of obtaining subjective information, e.g., information from a person about the reason why the person was active, or mental information, e.g., information about a person""s feeling when the person was active. Ordinarily, such subjective or mental information (hereinafter referred to collectively as mental information) is obtained by a doctor asking a patient questions about patient""s health in consultation or asking the patient to fill in an inquiry form. It is possible to elicit information on the mental condition of a patient by asking the patient some questions in consultation or by using an inquiry form. However, it is very difficult to obtain detailed information by going back to the past and it is impossible to determine variation in mental information in correspondence with variation in living body information obtained. A patient may periodically fill in an inquiry form by always carrying it about with him or her to provide mental information in time sequence. However, such a process is troublesome and there is a possibility of the patient forgetting the inquiry form in his or her daily living. Moreover, the conventional method of separately obtaining living body information and mental information entails a drawback of missing important information since it does not enable timely questioning immediately after a change in living body information has occurred.
An object of the present invention is to provide a portable living body information collector which is capable of continuously measuring living body information in daily life for the purpose of assistance in health care, diagnosis and treatment, which enables efficient collection of necessary mental information by timely questioning about health, and which can be worn on a human body.
To achieve the above-described object, according to one aspect of the present invention, there is provided a portable device for collecting living body information, the device including a detection circuit for detecting living body information and for outputting a signal representing the detected information, storage means for storing the output signal from the detection circuit and for storing at least one question and an answer to the question, a display unit which displays the question, input means for inputting an answer to the displayed question, and a control circuit which makes the display unit display the question at a suitable time, and which stores, sequentially with respect to time, answers input by the input means. With the device, information of the living body of a wearer wearing the portable information collection device and the mental condition of the wearer obtained through the question can be collected in time sequence to be used for assistance in treatment.
According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of collecting living body information, the method including the steps of averaging the latter half of 2N of living body information items most recently measured at predetermined intervals sequentially with respect to time, wherein N is an integer of 1 or more, averaging the former half of the 2N living body information items, and making a determination as to whether the difference between the average of the latter half of the 2N living body information items and the average of the former half of the 2N living body information items is larger than a predetermined threshold value, wherein questioning about health is performed if it is determined in the determination step that the difference between the averages is larger than the threshold value. This method enables determination as to whether a user to be treated is awake or asleep, and enables timely questioning when the user is awake. Information obtained in this manner can be used for treatment.